There's no escaping it: it's bloody hot. Filthy hot. London is melting all around us, stinking and sweaty; the Underground appears to be disintegrating...and, frankly, it has my sympathies. Back when we booked all of this, another evening of Beckett shorts at the Calder Bookshop seemed like a splendid idea. Come the time, and come the oppressive heat, leaving behind the merciful sea breeze to get on a train to the capital is akin to pouring away a bottle of water in the desert.
Still, we're here, survival kits and all. If it's bad for us, it must be nigh on unbearable for the actors: Peter Marinker spends the twenty-ish minutes of A Piece of Monologue stock-still in his nightgown and socks, probably cursing Beckett's lack of foresight in failing to include any brow-mopping opportunities in the stage directions. Heroically, he appears to lose himself in the character entirely; the key is letting the writing do the work, something that, I imagine, appears very much easier than it is. Especially in these conditions.
But once you let the music play, it takes you to some wonderful and some terrible places. A Piece of Monologue is as I recall it from several years ago: longer than you'd like it to be by a few minutes. As back then, I suspect that it's not accidental. The drawn-out end is intensely sombre and bleak and not at all comfortable; Marinker delivers it beautifully, stirring up little eddies of emotion at key moments that contrast with the sedate pace elsewhere. The imagery is gloomy, thunderous. Torrential rain. My God, now that you mention it, some torrential rain would be really nice....
A short and welcome interval, and we have The Expelled, one of a cluster of very fine post-war short stories that form some of Beckett's most accessible and entertaining work. It's a terrific piece, enormous subtlety and profundity hidden behind some belting comedy; it rewards you richly for digging into its depths, finding its stumbling sense of displacement. It hides a lot of sadness, I think.
But it already has a voice in my head. And it's not Anthony Jackson's voice, frustratingly. There's a coarseness missing, somehow. We both feel it. Much as Jackson gives it plenty of gusto, his rather thespian tones never really suggest that he's actually been kicked out of his lodgings into the gutter, hat following behind. Or any of the rest. We saw John Hurt perform a few snatches of this a few weeks ago and you believed him. That's an unfair comparison, I know. But an unavoidable one.
We escape into the air. It isn't any cooler, really, but there's a hint of a breeze for the sake of form. This series of productions is already proving to be much more than a mere footnote to the Beckett centenary. More than just a product of laudable enthusiasm too. Small-scale, sure, but that fosters its own sense of intimacy, of being in the same place. As A Piece of Monologue proves, the magic is just at home here as anywhere else, lifting the evenings beyond curiosity and interest and other faint praise.
A venture that's worth supporting, then. Perhaps starting with a collection to fund some air conditioning....
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